Thanks once again to a wonderful area

I know my friends outside Carbon County probably get tired of me telling them how wonderful this area is, but I hope the readers of this paper don't.

Over the weekend we completed our second year of No Grave Unadorned or should I call it NGU 2.0 because this year we upgraded and put flowers on graves in Emery County as well as in Carbon.

On many days last week I spent time with volunteers who have been working on the project. I watched as Pinnacle Canyon Academy brought their studentbody to the Price Cemetery to put flowers on graves. The kids were full of enthusiam and placed flowers all over the cemetery.

I watched Lion's Club members one evening putting flowers in the Carbonville Cemetery, despite a wind that was blowing pretty hard and dust swirling around them. They got all the graves done in short order. Until last year many of the graves in that cemetery had not had a flower on them for years. And for some, the flowers the same club placed last year, were still there: weather worn and losing their color, but still standing up straight and tall. The club replaced those as they went through. Hopefully we will be replacing those that were placed there last week next year too.

At the beginning of last week I worked with a number of people to put flowers on the graves in the Scofield Cemetery. As we were working, a number of people pulled up in trucks and started cleaning the cemetery. It turned out that this group comes every year to clean that cemetery and we happened to be there on the same weekend they were. They asked if they could put the flowers on the graves there next year and I agreed to let them when it would start.

It's been interesting to watch as people place flowers on graves as the project has continued. Some move from grave to grave just trying to get out as many flowers as they can. Others take time at almost every grave to read the epitaph and reflect a little. I think watching kids put flowers on graves is the most heartwarming. Many of them have never even been in a cemetery before. They are amazed at the dates, peoples epitaphs, and other things about some of the graves. It is a real lesson in community and history at the same time.

All I can say is how proud I am of our communities and their response to this project over the past two years. I have been contacted by a number of communities that would like to do something similar, so it is kind of neat for our areas project to become the model for possibly many more like it in other places around the country.

The papers may sponsor this project and get it going each year, but it really has little to do with us now. It is your community that has made it a success and we thank each and every one of you.